SUBJECT TAUGHT TO STUDENTS ON FOLLOWING COURSES: Medicine, Pharmacy, Nutrition, Health

Facilities:

There are several research laboratories at the Department of Medicinal Chemistry which are specially equipped to carry out research in different areas of medicinal chemistry such as organic synthesis, pharmaceutical analysis, metabolism, molecular modelling and QSAR. Facilities in the research laboratories consist of the arrays of UV, FTIR, HPLC and GC instruments, and different molecular modelling software runnig under Windows and Unix operating system working on the clusters of computer workstations. We also have access to the share facilities at the school of Pharmacy, such as 200 and 60 MHz NMR, and the facilities at the Drug Applied Research Centre.

This includes application of chemometric approaches in pharmaceutical and analytical sciences and quantitative structure activity relationship (QSAR) studies. The methods have been applied to the prediction of physico-chemical properties in mixed solvent systems, prediction of separation factors in capillary electrophoresis and HPLC, solubility prediction in supercritical fluids, aqueous solubility, membrane transport and pharmacokinetics (ADME) properties of drugs. We are also interested in molecular modeling of proteins and developing bioinformatics tools.

Pharmaceutical analysis:

Method development for quantification of active compounds in pharmaceutical preparations and biological samples using spectroscopic and separation methods such as UV-Vis, IR, flourimetry, liquid and gas chromatography, capillary electrophoresis and cloud point extraction are one of the main areas of research at the department.

Drug metabolism and enzyme studies:

Investigation of metabolism of drugs by molybdenum hydroxylases and the inhibitory effects of other compounds (particularly those obtained from medicinal plants), generation of the oxygen free radicals by enzymatic reactions catalyzed by aldhyde oxidase and xanthine oxidase are among other research areas covered by the department. We also study molecular modeling aspects of enzyme-substrate interactions.

Synthesis of drugs and biocompatible polymers:

Current research involves synthesis and bioactivity evaluation of new drug candidates and development of novel polymeric materials and their drug conjugates, polymeric membranes for transdermal formulations and preparation of polymeric particles for injectable implants.